Why You Should Care About Land Grabs
10 October, 2011 | By Agazit Abate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Do You Grab Land?
August/September 2011 Conducive
Land grab was in part spurred by the food and financial crisis of
2008 when international bodies, corporations, investment funds,
wealthy individuals, and governments re-focused their attention on
agriculture and food as a profitable commodity. As outlined by the
Oakland Institute reports, land grabs increase food insecurity,
environmental degradation, community repression and displacement,
and increased reliance on aid.
Meet the investors
While media coverage has focused on the role of countries like
India and China in land deals, the Oakland Institute’s investigation
reveals that western firms, wealthy US and European individuals,
and investment funds with ties to major banks such as Goldman
Sachs and JP Morgan are also implicated in the grabs. Investors
include alternative investment firms like the London-based Emergent
that works to attract speculators, and various universities like
Harvard, Spelman, and Vanderbilt.
Several Texas-based interests are associated with a major 600,000
hectares South Sudan deal, which involves Kinyeti Development,
LLC, an Austin, Texas-based “global business development
partnership and holding company,” managed by Howard Eugene
Douglas, a former United States Ambassador at Large and
Coordinator for Refugee Affairs. A key player in the largest land
deal in Tanzania is Iowa agribusiness entrepreneur and Republican
Party stalwart, Bruce Rastetter.
US companies often orchestrate these deals below the radar, using
subsidiaries registered in other countries, like Petrotech-ffn Agro
Mali, which is a subsidiary of Petrotech-ffn USA. Many European
countries are also involved, often with support provided by their
governments and work with embassies in African countries.
Swedish and German firms have interests in the production of
biofuels in Tanzanian. Addax Bioenergy from Switzerland and
Quifel International Holdings (QIH) from Portugal are major
investors in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone Agriculture (SLA) is
actually a subsidiary of the UK based Crad-1 (CAPARO
Renewable Agriculture Developments Ltd.), associated with the
Tony Blair African Governance Initiative.
As the media has reported, Indian firms are involved in land grab,
particularly in Ethiopia. Food insecure nations like those of the gulf
region are also participating in these land deals to secure food to
feed their home countries.
Economic development?
A major argument by land grabbers is that these schemes will lead
to economic development for the host countries. The Oakland
Institute reports reveal however that the land transactions are either
for free (in the case of Mali) or very cheap (in the case of Ethiopia
and Sierra Leone). These transactions are largely unregulated with
no stipulation or guarantees that they will help the local populations
or create infrastructure. While land grabbers focus their rhetoric on
foreign direct investment as justification, there is no evidence to
show that no substantial foreign direct investment will come in to the
countries.
Most of these deals come with huge tax breaks and other
investment incentives, a great deal for the investors, but this means
less money coming into the country that could possibly go to
infrastructure or social services. For instance, Sierra Leone allows
100 percent foreign ownership; there are no restrictions on foreign
exchange, full repatriation of profits, dividends and royalties and no
limits on expatriate employees.
Another justification for the land deals includes the idea that they will
increase employment. Again, research reveals that this is overstated
at best and completely untrue at worse. The Emvest Matuba
investment project summary and staff at Emergent and Em Vest
promise job creation with majority employment from the local
community. Emergent’s recent head count reveals that currently only
17 permanent positions are in security (36 staff). In Mali, the area
targeted by recent large land deals could easily sustain 112,537
farm families (over half a million people, 686,478). It is instead in
the hands of 22 investors and will create at best a few thousand
jobs.
To make matters worse, the limited employment created by these
land deals are low wage, seasonal and primarily benefit the investors
who want cheap labor to compliment cheap land.
Community displacement
While those involved firmly contend that communities are not being
forcibly removed from their lands and if they are asked to moved
are being compensated, the opposite proves true. Ethiopian
government officials, for instance, have stated that the lands being
leased are unused or abandoned. Meanwhile, 700,000 indigenous
people who lived in a land that was targeted for land investment
were relocated.
In 2010 in Samana Dugu, Mali, bulldozers came in to clear the land
and when the community protested, they were met by police forces
who beat and arrested them. In Tanzania, AgriSol Energy is setting
its sites on Katumba and Mishamo refugee settlements. The MOU
between AgriSol Energy and the local government stipulates that
these settlements, which house 162,000 refugees that fled Burundi
in 1972 and have been farming the land for 40 years, have to be
closed. In June 2009, Amnesty International reported refugees
being pressured to leave camps. Some of them lost their homes to a
fire set by individuals acting under the instructions of the Tanzanian
authorities to get them to vacate the camp. Refugee leaders who
have attempted to organize have been arrested and detained.
Investment sites in various African countries visited by the Oakland
Institute revealed a loss of local farmland where the lands held a
variety of different uses and social/ecological value. Some of the
lands that are claimed to be unused are those where the
communities use the land for pastures, and considered communally
used areas.
Forests and national reserves, that are home to vital animal, fish and
plant species and where communities have found alternative
sustenance in times of food scarcity, have been burned and cleared
out. These lands are being destroyed without an understanding of
their local significance.
Many of the communities interviewed stated that there was no prior
notification of the land investments. They only realized what was
happening when the bulldozers arrived in their communities.
Food insecurity
While most of the countries and regions targeted suffer from food
insecurity, these land deals focus on producing export commodities,
including food, biofuels, and cut flowers for foreign consumption. In
Mali, half of the investors with large land holdings in the Office du
Niger intend to grow plants used to produce agrofuels, such as
sugarcane, jatropha, or other oleaginous crops. In Mozambique,
most of the investments are geared to growing timber and agrofuels
rather than food crops. Food crops represented only 32,000
hectares of the 433,000 hectares that were approved for
agricultural investments between 2007 and 2009.
In Ethiopia, much of large scale land deals are for the purpose of
growing food for a foreign market. Because land grab throughout
Ethiopia has cleared communal lands and plots used for cultivation
as well as forests, the communities primary sources of sustenance
are threatened. Additionally, commercial farming on these lands will
affect fish habitats, wildlife, and grazing lands leading to even more
food insecurity.
Water is of a particular concern as runoff from commercial farms
will contaminate and reduce of water supplies. Dam construction,
such as the proposed Alwero River dam, spark additional concern
about access to water for local and downstream communities. No
clause has been found in the lease agreements that discuss water use
and there is no evidence that water use from commercial agriculture
is managed, monitored, or regulated.
In Ethiopia, not only is there no clause in any of the lease
agreements that require investors to improve local food security
conditions or make food available for the local populations, the
federal government has actually provided incentives for those
investors that grow cash crops for a foreign market. Abera Deressa,
federal minister for the ministry of Agriculture stated, “If we get
money we can buy food anywhere. Then we can solve the food
problem.” A major concern of the communities the Oakland
Institute interviewed is that they believe the government is
intentionally creating a situation where communities must rely solely
on the government for their food, in an attempt to marginalize and
disempower them.
The environmental factors
Environmental degradation is a major concern in these land deals
because they have limited transparency and environmental impact
regulations.
Forests have many uses for the local communities including as food,
medicine, fuelwood, and building materials. Forests also hold
cultural and historical significance. Expected outcomes of clearing
the forests include, loss and degradation of wetlands, decrease in
wildlife populations and habitat, proliferation of invasive species,
and loss of biodiversity.
These environmental concerns are exemplified in Ethiopia’s
Gambela National Park where the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation
Authority (EWCA) estimates that 438,000 hectares of land have
been leased in the vicinity of the park. While the park boundaries
are not set, lands that the local population considers a part of the
park have been cleared by large-scale investors, including Karuturi
and Saudi Star. Wetlands have been altered and forests have been
cleared. According to recent surveys, the Gambela National Park is
home to 69 mammal species, valuable wetland habitat, hundreds of
bird species, and 92 fish species.
To compound matters, industrial agriculture will increase toxicity,
disruption of its system of pest control, create new weeds and virus
strains, decrease biodiversity, and spread of genetically-engineered
genes to indigenous plants. Additionally it will put these countries at
a disadvantage to adapt to climate change.
For many of these land deals, Environmental Impact Assessments
are not widely used or enforced, making this situation all the more
alarming.
The verdict and a way forward
Investment in agriculture is crucial to combating hunger, fighting
climate change, and ensuring the livelihoods of farmers. However,
as pointed out by Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Rapporteur
on the Right to Food, the issue is not one of merely increasing
budget allocations to agriculture, but rather, “that of choosing from
different models of agricultural development which may have
different impacts and benefit various groups differently.”
In December 2010, the United Nations came out with a report
stating that the benefits of agroecological methods over traditional
industrial farming. It added that we can double the world’s food
supply if we support small farmers. The research of the Oakland
Institute echoes the same conclusion. For instance, in Mali, where
the System of Rice Intensification has been adopted along the Niger
River near Timbuktu, farmers have been able to attain yields of 7 to
15 tons per hectare per year, for an average of 9 tons per hectare.
This is more than twice the conventional irrigated rice yield in the
area, and more than the previsions of the Moulin Moderne du Mali,
one of the major investors. This irrigation system involves plots of
35 hectares of land, shared by as many as 100 farmers, meaning
each household has access to only one-third of a hectare. Still, from
that piece of land, they are able to earn $1,879 – more than double
the average annual per capital income of $676.
While research proves one thing, government officials and investors
do the opposite. Instead of supporting small farmers, these land
deals support industrial agriculture while displacing and
disempowering the very people that have the ability to shift their
communities from insecure to sustainable . Land grab puts these
countries on a path that will surely lead to increased food insecurity,
environmental degradation, increased reliance on aid, and the
marginalization of farming and pastoralist communities. The issue at
stake is not only one of increased food insecurity, but an attack on
food sovereignty or peoples right to produce their own food.
Land grab is irrational at best and violent at worst. It’s a violent act
to take away peoples right to food, access to their ancestral land,
their social and historical ties, and their overall right for human
dignity. It’s a violent act to strip them of their future and the land of
its fertility.
While land deals are going on behind closed doors, communities are
resisting. The 2008 food uprisings, the revolt in Madagascar against
land grab, and the recent protests in Guinea, all show communities
who are standing up for their right for food sovereignty. In fact, in all
of the countries visited, the land deals were met by community
organizing. Knowing what we know, resisting these land deals on all
fronts and working towards investments in sustainable agriculture
and empowering local populations points to the only rational and
humane way forward.
Agazit Abate, is a 2010-2011 Intern Scholar at the Oakland
Institute and based on the research and publications of the
Oakland Institute. She received her BA in International
Development Studies and MA in African Studies from the
University of California Los Angeles. Her areas of interest
include food sovereignty, farmers’ rights, climate change,
sustainable development, social justice, cultural production,
and narratives of resistance. To learn more about land
investment deals in Africa, visit the Oakland Institute website,
www.oaklandinstitute.org.
Courtesy
10 October, 2011 | By Agazit Abate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How Do You Grab Land?
- The recent phenomenon of
aggressive land takeovers,
also known as land grabs,
has resulted in the taking of
enormous portions of land
throughout Africa. In 2009
alone, nearly 60 million
hectares of land was
purchased or leased
throughout the continent for
August/September 2011 Conducive
Land grab was in part spurred by the food and financial crisis of
2008 when international bodies, corporations, investment funds,
wealthy individuals, and governments re-focused their attention on
agriculture and food as a profitable commodity. As outlined by the
Oakland Institute reports, land grabs increase food insecurity,
environmental degradation, community repression and displacement,
and increased reliance on aid.
Meet the investors
While media coverage has focused on the role of countries like
India and China in land deals, the Oakland Institute’s investigation
reveals that western firms, wealthy US and European individuals,
and investment funds with ties to major banks such as Goldman
Sachs and JP Morgan are also implicated in the grabs. Investors
include alternative investment firms like the London-based Emergent
that works to attract speculators, and various universities like
Harvard, Spelman, and Vanderbilt.
Several Texas-based interests are associated with a major 600,000
hectares South Sudan deal, which involves Kinyeti Development,
LLC, an Austin, Texas-based “global business development
partnership and holding company,” managed by Howard Eugene
Douglas, a former United States Ambassador at Large and
Coordinator for Refugee Affairs. A key player in the largest land
deal in Tanzania is Iowa agribusiness entrepreneur and Republican
Party stalwart, Bruce Rastetter.
US companies often orchestrate these deals below the radar, using
subsidiaries registered in other countries, like Petrotech-ffn Agro
Mali, which is a subsidiary of Petrotech-ffn USA. Many European
countries are also involved, often with support provided by their
governments and work with embassies in African countries.
Swedish and German firms have interests in the production of
biofuels in Tanzanian. Addax Bioenergy from Switzerland and
Quifel International Holdings (QIH) from Portugal are major
investors in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone Agriculture (SLA) is
actually a subsidiary of the UK based Crad-1 (CAPARO
Renewable Agriculture Developments Ltd.), associated with the
Tony Blair African Governance Initiative.
As the media has reported, Indian firms are involved in land grab,
particularly in Ethiopia. Food insecure nations like those of the gulf
region are also participating in these land deals to secure food to
feed their home countries.
Economic development?
A major argument by land grabbers is that these schemes will lead
to economic development for the host countries. The Oakland
Institute reports reveal however that the land transactions are either
for free (in the case of Mali) or very cheap (in the case of Ethiopia
and Sierra Leone). These transactions are largely unregulated with
no stipulation or guarantees that they will help the local populations
or create infrastructure. While land grabbers focus their rhetoric on
foreign direct investment as justification, there is no evidence to
show that no substantial foreign direct investment will come in to the
countries.
Most of these deals come with huge tax breaks and other
investment incentives, a great deal for the investors, but this means
less money coming into the country that could possibly go to
infrastructure or social services. For instance, Sierra Leone allows
100 percent foreign ownership; there are no restrictions on foreign
exchange, full repatriation of profits, dividends and royalties and no
limits on expatriate employees.
Another justification for the land deals includes the idea that they will
increase employment. Again, research reveals that this is overstated
at best and completely untrue at worse. The Emvest Matuba
investment project summary and staff at Emergent and Em Vest
promise job creation with majority employment from the local
community. Emergent’s recent head count reveals that currently only
17 permanent positions are in security (36 staff). In Mali, the area
targeted by recent large land deals could easily sustain 112,537
farm families (over half a million people, 686,478). It is instead in
the hands of 22 investors and will create at best a few thousand
jobs.
To make matters worse, the limited employment created by these
land deals are low wage, seasonal and primarily benefit the investors
who want cheap labor to compliment cheap land.
Community displacement
While those involved firmly contend that communities are not being
forcibly removed from their lands and if they are asked to moved
are being compensated, the opposite proves true. Ethiopian
government officials, for instance, have stated that the lands being
leased are unused or abandoned. Meanwhile, 700,000 indigenous
people who lived in a land that was targeted for land investment
were relocated.
In 2010 in Samana Dugu, Mali, bulldozers came in to clear the land
and when the community protested, they were met by police forces
who beat and arrested them. In Tanzania, AgriSol Energy is setting
its sites on Katumba and Mishamo refugee settlements. The MOU
between AgriSol Energy and the local government stipulates that
these settlements, which house 162,000 refugees that fled Burundi
in 1972 and have been farming the land for 40 years, have to be
closed. In June 2009, Amnesty International reported refugees
being pressured to leave camps. Some of them lost their homes to a
fire set by individuals acting under the instructions of the Tanzanian
authorities to get them to vacate the camp. Refugee leaders who
have attempted to organize have been arrested and detained.
Investment sites in various African countries visited by the Oakland
Institute revealed a loss of local farmland where the lands held a
variety of different uses and social/ecological value. Some of the
lands that are claimed to be unused are those where the
communities use the land for pastures, and considered communally
used areas.
Forests and national reserves, that are home to vital animal, fish and
plant species and where communities have found alternative
sustenance in times of food scarcity, have been burned and cleared
out. These lands are being destroyed without an understanding of
their local significance.
Many of the communities interviewed stated that there was no prior
notification of the land investments. They only realized what was
happening when the bulldozers arrived in their communities.
Food insecurity
While most of the countries and regions targeted suffer from food
insecurity, these land deals focus on producing export commodities,
including food, biofuels, and cut flowers for foreign consumption. In
Mali, half of the investors with large land holdings in the Office du
Niger intend to grow plants used to produce agrofuels, such as
sugarcane, jatropha, or other oleaginous crops. In Mozambique,
most of the investments are geared to growing timber and agrofuels
rather than food crops. Food crops represented only 32,000
hectares of the 433,000 hectares that were approved for
agricultural investments between 2007 and 2009.
In Ethiopia, much of large scale land deals are for the purpose of
growing food for a foreign market. Because land grab throughout
Ethiopia has cleared communal lands and plots used for cultivation
as well as forests, the communities primary sources of sustenance
are threatened. Additionally, commercial farming on these lands will
affect fish habitats, wildlife, and grazing lands leading to even more
food insecurity.
Water is of a particular concern as runoff from commercial farms
will contaminate and reduce of water supplies. Dam construction,
such as the proposed Alwero River dam, spark additional concern
about access to water for local and downstream communities. No
clause has been found in the lease agreements that discuss water use
and there is no evidence that water use from commercial agriculture
is managed, monitored, or regulated.
In Ethiopia, not only is there no clause in any of the lease
agreements that require investors to improve local food security
conditions or make food available for the local populations, the
federal government has actually provided incentives for those
investors that grow cash crops for a foreign market. Abera Deressa,
federal minister for the ministry of Agriculture stated, “If we get
money we can buy food anywhere. Then we can solve the food
problem.” A major concern of the communities the Oakland
Institute interviewed is that they believe the government is
intentionally creating a situation where communities must rely solely
on the government for their food, in an attempt to marginalize and
disempower them.
The environmental factors
Environmental degradation is a major concern in these land deals
because they have limited transparency and environmental impact
regulations.
Forests have many uses for the local communities including as food,
medicine, fuelwood, and building materials. Forests also hold
cultural and historical significance. Expected outcomes of clearing
the forests include, loss and degradation of wetlands, decrease in
wildlife populations and habitat, proliferation of invasive species,
and loss of biodiversity.
These environmental concerns are exemplified in Ethiopia’s
Gambela National Park where the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation
Authority (EWCA) estimates that 438,000 hectares of land have
been leased in the vicinity of the park. While the park boundaries
are not set, lands that the local population considers a part of the
park have been cleared by large-scale investors, including Karuturi
and Saudi Star. Wetlands have been altered and forests have been
cleared. According to recent surveys, the Gambela National Park is
home to 69 mammal species, valuable wetland habitat, hundreds of
bird species, and 92 fish species.
To compound matters, industrial agriculture will increase toxicity,
disruption of its system of pest control, create new weeds and virus
strains, decrease biodiversity, and spread of genetically-engineered
genes to indigenous plants. Additionally it will put these countries at
a disadvantage to adapt to climate change.
For many of these land deals, Environmental Impact Assessments
are not widely used or enforced, making this situation all the more
alarming.
The verdict and a way forward
Investment in agriculture is crucial to combating hunger, fighting
climate change, and ensuring the livelihoods of farmers. However,
as pointed out by Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Rapporteur
on the Right to Food, the issue is not one of merely increasing
budget allocations to agriculture, but rather, “that of choosing from
different models of agricultural development which may have
different impacts and benefit various groups differently.”
In December 2010, the United Nations came out with a report
stating that the benefits of agroecological methods over traditional
industrial farming. It added that we can double the world’s food
supply if we support small farmers. The research of the Oakland
Institute echoes the same conclusion. For instance, in Mali, where
the System of Rice Intensification has been adopted along the Niger
River near Timbuktu, farmers have been able to attain yields of 7 to
15 tons per hectare per year, for an average of 9 tons per hectare.
This is more than twice the conventional irrigated rice yield in the
area, and more than the previsions of the Moulin Moderne du Mali,
one of the major investors. This irrigation system involves plots of
35 hectares of land, shared by as many as 100 farmers, meaning
each household has access to only one-third of a hectare. Still, from
that piece of land, they are able to earn $1,879 – more than double
the average annual per capital income of $676.
While research proves one thing, government officials and investors
do the opposite. Instead of supporting small farmers, these land
deals support industrial agriculture while displacing and
disempowering the very people that have the ability to shift their
communities from insecure to sustainable . Land grab puts these
countries on a path that will surely lead to increased food insecurity,
environmental degradation, increased reliance on aid, and the
marginalization of farming and pastoralist communities. The issue at
stake is not only one of increased food insecurity, but an attack on
food sovereignty or peoples right to produce their own food.
Land grab is irrational at best and violent at worst. It’s a violent act
to take away peoples right to food, access to their ancestral land,
their social and historical ties, and their overall right for human
dignity. It’s a violent act to strip them of their future and the land of
its fertility.
While land deals are going on behind closed doors, communities are
resisting. The 2008 food uprisings, the revolt in Madagascar against
land grab, and the recent protests in Guinea, all show communities
who are standing up for their right for food sovereignty. In fact, in all
of the countries visited, the land deals were met by community
organizing. Knowing what we know, resisting these land deals on all
fronts and working towards investments in sustainable agriculture
and empowering local populations points to the only rational and
humane way forward.
Agazit Abate, is a 2010-2011 Intern Scholar at the Oakland
Institute and based on the research and publications of the
Oakland Institute. She received her BA in International
Development Studies and MA in African Studies from the
University of California Los Angeles. Her areas of interest
include food sovereignty, farmers’ rights, climate change,
sustainable development, social justice, cultural production,
and narratives of resistance. To learn more about land
investment deals in Africa, visit the Oakland Institute website,
www.oaklandinstitute.org.
Courtesy
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